Tom Walkinshaw has had plenty of experience in preparing race cars. Not only that, there is still life in the old dog yet as his current involvement in motor sport illustrates. TWR racing saw light of day in 1976 and among his first successful cars were BMW 3.0 CSL’s. Mazda RX 7’s saw his cars clinch the British touring car championships in 1980 and ’81 with Wynn Percy at the wheel. His association with British Leyland began after being approached to prepare a Range Rover for the Paris Dakar in 1982, which it won!

Tom was tempted into preparing Jags and especially the Rover 3500 Vitesse for touring car racing. With sponsorship from the Spanish cigarette company, Bastos, the red and white Rovers were soon to be plastered all over European Touring car results. The Rover was powered by an aluminium blocked 3500cc V8 based on an old Buick design and had already been used in numerous BL cars since the early seventies.

Tom Walkinshaw went on to other successes including being engineering director to Benetton during Michael Schumacher’s successful assault on the F1 world championship in 1984. He was also involved with the V8 Supercar series, being the preparer of both the DSV Dealer team and the HRT cars. In 2008 Walkinshaw took over the HSV Team and continued his V8 Supercar involvement as Walkinshaw Racing (Bundaberg Red Racing).

Without putting too fine a point on it, this model is a rip off of the Scalextric Rover. The body contains the same moulding marks and with the exception of the rear wing which has been added, is the same exact measurement across the board. But there is one short fall. The Scalextric rover has its sills moulded as part of the chassis/base. This model is missing that depth and therefore it is very slim when viewed from the side. The Jaguar I did (see this forum) was the same but it never really sunk home until the model was finished.

No matter, after a little bit of thought and innovation I overcame the problem and the model looks fine. Another problem that had to be surmounted was the fact that there were no headlight lenses, just a serrated headlight which was a direct impression of the Scalextric light. Again, I managed to pull off a coup here as there were some Austin Rover decals to be fitted to the headlight lenses!

First up was the chassis solution. Once again I have gone for the Wixwacing PCB chassis, as I am very comfortable with this now and have got it off to a fine art. The chassis was to have an NC5 motor , a Mk II ‘Wixle’ front end and a half driver tray. I am expecting to race this at some stage and therefore declined to do a detailed interior as I have done with other models which set out as shelf queens.

The next step was to draw the chassis to scale on paper??? The idea was to build a 3D chassis which has depth and emulates the 3D style of chassis that the original model had. This would add a bit more depth to the side view of the model and also drop the centre of gravity by three m.m. The drawing was done as a 2D chassis and in an end elevation I calculated the extra length required so that I could turn up the sides and the front and rear.

The new chassis was marked out and cut from the PCB and using a Dremel style cut off disc I cut a groove along the chassis top side to a little over half depth. The sides where then carefully pulled up. This created a fracture in the PCB resin but it did not separate . The outer edge of the raised parts were supported by a 3.0 m.m. spacer and a bead of solder was run the length of the cuts. This was also done to the front and rear. In the case of the front and rear the corner parts of the chassis had to be bent through an extra plane to create the double angle. This was marked out, cut and soldered too. Before this was done I took time to mark and drill the axle mounting holes, guide tube hole, motor hole and the crown wheel hole.

I finally ended up with the 3D chassis and after some trial fittings, I selected the best location for the three mounting post holes. The mounting posts were created and once dry, were screwed to the chassis. The chassis was offered in to place and the mounting posts trimmed to length until the chassis sat pat in the body. The posts were scored at their ends and the place on the chassis was scored too and extra strength epoxy was coated on the post ends and in the body where the posts located.

The chassis was placed in position and left for a couple of days to cure. Once dry, the screws were removed and I could now get on with mounting the motive parts on the chassis and painting and decaling the body. The chassis was straight forward from here, much like many other chassis I have made and it wasn’t too long before the motor, guide and axles were all in place.

The body was a similar story with the difficult bits being attempted first while other things were drying or gluing. First up was to get the body down to a respectable weight. This involve the routine of dremmelling the body interior carefully, checking the body thickness regularly by holding it up against a table lamp. This showed the different thicknesses of resin and allowed the body to be lightened accurately without either going through the resin or more importantly not having a door fall out from grinding through to the door slots!

I took the body down to 18 grams as it is quite a large body and I estimated that it would be in excess of thirty grams once the drivers tray was fitted and it was painted and glazed. Once down to this weight the next job was to get the windows to fit well. This is a job we don’t want to be doing with a painted body as It could result in some tearful marks on the paintwork from a slip of the hand.

The clear parts were cut into four panels and trimmed so there was just two to three mil of clear lapping around the body posts. The body posts were profiled so the clear parts were a good flush fit and not standing proud. This also included chamfering the front and rear window openings top and bottom to almost a knife edge to ensure the clear parts weren’t sunk in too far when fitted. The body then received a coat of flat grey to highlight any unevenness and defects.

Next up was to get the exterior smooth and ready for some more paint. While this was going n I constructed a drivers tray. This consisted of a laminated dash assembly and another ‘Wixwacing’ hand carved steering wheel. The parts were offered into the body regularly until they were a snug fit. Allowance had to be made at the front to accommodate the thickness of clear parts used for the windscreen. Once the parts were completed they were painted before finally assembling them.

Once the body had been fettled I topped up the flat grey just to confirm its finish. The model then had a coat of flat white which, when dry, was rubbed down with some cotton sheet. I did this because I didn’t want to rub through to the grey beneath. Next up the model had a coat of gloss white enamel. Once dry for a couple of days the body was masked to apply the red. This went over the white well and I saw no reason to repeat it. We were now looking at the decals.

I have had problems with all makes of decals recently, since switching to enamel paints. Too thick a coat will see the edges of some leading makes of decals curl and ripple along the edges. Even after coating them with proprietary decal treatment it still happened. My solution has been to paint the model in enamel and finish it off with acrylic clear lacquer.

On to the headlamp issue. The headlamps are sunk into the front of the model and are corrugated!! I painted the lamp lens areas silver and again after a suitable drying time I then mixed some clear epoxy. This was applied with a fine paint brush, not by painting, but by ‘dropping’ the resin into the light recess. This was continued carefully until the light recess was full. I then applied a little more until the resin had a slight convex finish to it. Again, once dried, I could proceed with the decals and, as always, one side was applied at a time to minimise the risk of dislodging or damaging decals already applied but not quite dry. Finishing with the roof and headlights I cut the Austin Rover decals free and after soaking applied them to the new headlight ‘lenses’! I have to admit it looks very effective too.

Yet again after a drying period, the model had a complete coating in clear lacquer. Once set, the rear lights were picked out in silver and again, once dry the lenses were picked out in Tamiya clear red and clear orange, making the rear lights stand out from the model. The window frames were then masked in order that the black trims could be painted. When ready the complete model received its final coat of clear and was left for several days.

The tried and tested clear parts were offered into place one at a time and one at a time strategic edges were ‘tacked’ in place with superglue applied with the point of a modellers knife. This had the effect of allowing me to glue all the windows accurately in place. Once achieved, I mixed some extra strength epoxy and painted a thin coat over the edge of the clear parts and on to the body insides. When this had cured after twenty four hours, the interior of the model needed to be painted. The insides where mostly covered in overspray and the windows had black on them from their treatment. Brush painting, I coated the inside of the model from the waist line up with flat white. This had a second coat to give good coverage and once done the interior tray was ready to be fitted.

The driver’s tray had the driver cut to size as his head was touching the top of the turret and then he was glued, along with the steering wheel, in place on the drivers tray. The tray was touched up and finally placed into the body. Blue tack was applied in four spots to hold it in place from underneath and some five minute epoxy was mixed and applied in several places to hold it in place, this will allow easy removal at a later date should it ever be necessary.

As this is intended for the track I had to make some serious decisions about its running gear. Wheels are Ninco and tyres are MJK, even the fronts. To minimise drag during sideslip I have grooved the fronts. As yet I haven’t had this model on the track but hopefully it contains all the essentials to make it a good board track racer. The model comes in a little on the high side of OK at 105 grams, nothing the NC5 can’t handle though, and the weight distribution is 45% / 55% which should fare well, with 57 grams over the back wheels.

My only complaint would be that the clear parts are poor and there isn't much that can be done easily. They are vacuum formed and it looks like there was a lot of gritty dust left in the mould when it was formed, pity !Inspite of that, I decided the model needed to shine a little more, although it was shining quite nicely anyway. But nonetheless, I gave it a final rub down wit Tamiya ‘Finish’ plastic polish, et Voila! Next up, the track!! Stay tuned!